Oh joy: Minneapolis isi n the news again. I have, at present, two views. They may be subject to change based on additional information.

1. I have seen enough bodycam footage - which, I know, is the equivalent of the old "I've seen a lot of Photoshops" meme - to know that driving a motor vehicle at an LEO will get you shot. If they give you a lawful command, as they say, to step out of the vehicle, and you refuse and drive away, and the rear-view window grazes a cop, there will be trouble, and that's on you. This doesn't mean it's always justified.

2. I don't think the shooting was justified.

Had a long conversation with Daughter about this tonight, and got into the many, many secondary and tertiary issues involved, which are irrelevant to whether it was a justified shooting. What if they were detaining a murderer? What if he was some chud who'd answered an ad and had been on the force for a week? What about the stories about deportations of people who were innocent? What if this was a Federal agent enforcing integration in the 60s, confronted by an angry racist mob? And so on. All pertinent to the larger discussion but irrelevant to this particular incident.

I suspect that the shooter would, if he could, rewind and revise.

BREAKING: There is a vacancy. I got an email that said the units I want aren’t available, BUT, there’s an upcoming opening in a unit that has a highly desirable floorplan. It’s a corner unit. I’m looking at it Thursday morning. I feel backed into a corner - hah hah, didn’t intend that - because if I commit now, it means the whole “townhouse” thing gets nixed.

So I went online and looked at townhouses, and I hate them all. The best ones look like something from 1992, because they’re probably from 1992. Thin dark wood around the doors and windows, or, thin light wood. Forward-facing garage. Smoked-glass (brown) ceiling fixtures. Pictures of empty bedroom with one small window. The bile, it surges. NO. But you can walk out the door and be outside, on the ground, amongst a tree or two, instead of being seven floors up with a suburban view. BUT. They’re all just houses stuck together. The Fred has all these wonderful public spaces where there are . . . other people! And an indoor pool. And outdoor fire pits. BUT. It’s a room in the sky and I feel as though I’ll be even more cut off. BUT it would be different.

Oh it’ll be different.

That farrago of thought was the later afternoon. In the morning I took the dog for a walk and he yanked on the leash and I fell on the ice on my hip, and bounced my head a bit for extra effect. And then we walked some more, and since the leg didn’t give way and I punched through the ice-covered snowbanks without pain, I figured it's just a BS, or Bruise Situation. Unless something broke in a subtle way and will produce a heart-stopping clot fragment in a week, but we'll see. Not worried.

I dropped off some books at the library. They will take two bags a day. I have 14. So we will have an ongoing relationship for the next week. Then the waste disposal center, where I got rid of some old radios that look nice but don’t work, and have no resale value. It should’ve felt lighter but the end effect of casting off things seems to add weight.

Which brings us to the Simpsons.

 

 

For a while many many years ago I used Amazon credits to pick up World of Springfield figurines. Or, more accurately, toys. For years they all sat on a shelf in the basement rumpus room (Where not much rumpus sing occurred, to be honest) and I just liked the sight of them. I committed the capital sin of taking them out of the boxes, I am ashamed to say. But you were supposed to! They were interactive! They plugged into little connectors on these sets:

 

 

When a button is depressed, words are spoken. Like I said: interactive! . If you have deep Simpsons know-how you know he’s having a sugar rush: mmmm that’s good Squishy, he said, a direct quote of Jackie Gleason that may not have been recognized by most of the audience.

This one I got because, well, radio:

 

 

And now I’m amused by Mulhouse’s dad in the background, because he’s cutting his post-divorce song, “Can I Borrow a Feeling.”

I could put them on eBay and wait, but I have no desire to do that. It has to go.

I mean, it doesn’t, but well, it does.

 

 

  

That’s the dandiest thing. Once a bank, I’m sure.  

Another year, another walk up and down the blasted streets of Detroit. Another Bleat tradition. Alas.

 

At first glance, not bad!

Catholic Charities, it says.

In need of some charity of its own now.

Elegant, civilized, historic, ruined, an empty embassy of a long-gone empire.

That’s the dandiest thing. Once a bank, I’m sure.

JAYE DEE’S MART says the faded sign.

I’m curious about the interior. What was left, if anything. You assume anything of monetary value was stripped long ago, but vandals or squatters won't care about some decorative plaster bits. But it's probably rotted and gone.

It’s almost begging you to stay away, because horrible things have happened here.

   
  The original details are still sharp, above all the darkness.
     

Mostly closed, then entirely so.

Decline like this is hard to reverse.

f it was a bank, it was a branch. Now it looks like a drive-up Roman temple.

It’s probably been not-a-bank for half a century.


Three tidy little citizens, two of which were modernized.

Probably helped for a while. Shep had the nicest facelift, because it was total and clean and redid the whole thing. The building on the right looks like an old man who's hiked his pants up to her sternum.

None of this was necessary or inevitable, you know.

Probably lots of parking available now.

Another simple facade, maybe late 40s or 60s, with a Hee-Haw wood ruination.

When you can’t keep the lights on in this business, well.

Well, if things turn up, the solid building on the corner could be rehabbed -

Or not

As of press time, the remaining structure could be brought back to life.

Block after block after block of emptiness . . .

. . . and ruin . . .

 

But now and then, yes! A sign of commercial activity.

Mostly this, though.

Someone's hard-fought accomplishment, once upon a time:

 

It’s like the building just threw up its entire past.

Not even the church is spared; illiterate scrawls abound.

 

A reasonable reaction.

And now the words you've been waiting to hear: more next week!

That will suffice for Thursday, Bleat-wise. The updates for today follow our usual pattern: Main Street postcards at the top of the year. Then comes . . . what, class? Yes, Google Street View selections. And then? Very good, restaurants. When May returns it's time for the run of a hundred motels, but that is very, very far away.

See you around.